Yes, I know, but what are days of the week anyway…
One of the things people have been hoarding/panic buying is yeast. I speculate that lots of it is rotting in fridges, since bakeries and supermarkets are indeed still open, though others will use the time for baking, as does yours truly. Part of it stems from my inability to plan for bread. Usually we eat pretty little bread so i buy like a pound of bread that lasts for the week. Now we need bread every single day, so different forms of frybread have been our new best friend. And who doesn’t love fresh frybread? Some days I use baking powder, but i also like yeast bread, and I was running low on yeast.
Thankfully, as long as you have some yeast and a freezer, you can be helped. Simply mix your fresh yeast, lukewarm water, a tablespoon of sugar and a cup of flour and let it rest for 15 minutes. Fill into ice cube trays (or mini muffin trays or whatever, I used my French canéles silicone tray) and quickly freeze. Put something frozen on top and don’t overfill the tray.
Freeze solid and ta-daa: lots of readily frozen yeast.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Working with this yeast means means you need more time, but that makes a yeast dough all the better anyway.
And to prove the concept that “you can multiply yeast indefinitely”, I washed down the sides of the mixing bowl and started a sweet yeast dough. I let it rest in the cool hall over night and let it catch up speed again this morning.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
He is risen.
©Giliell, all rights reserved
Nobody in my family ever said no to cinnamon rolls.
And did I mention that I’m bad with “how much bread do we need” and the days of the week? Well, I’d forgotten that today is a holiday and no bakery van will come, so I took some of my frozen yeast and made naan. You could cook it in a hot pan, but I prefer the pizza stone in the oven. I also need to increase the amount we pay for electricity or there will be lots of crying come January (we pay an estimated amount for water and electricity each months and then get the detailed bill in January. Usually it’s “we ow you 20 bucks / you owe us 20 bucks, but we’re home a lot more, won’t go on holiday and keep baking)
Look at this:
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That’s what the kids left us. Because fresh naan, who doesn’t like it? BTW, if you ever try to make frybread, regardless of what your raising agent, put away that rolling pin. Just gently stretch it over your hands or you’ll press out all that nice air your raising agent worked so hard to put into your dough.
I’ve started digging out long-forgotten things in my pantry. Not because I’m running out of food, just that I actually have some time to invest in food preparation now, and I might as well see what I can do with some old stuff.
Lentils and rice seem fine after about a decade. Also tried to make some bread, but my decade-old yeast didn’t work so well (it did work a bit, but I put in about double what was called for, and still got a pretty dense loaf.
I tried to start a sourdough starter earlier this week, and just yesterday it was all puffed-up and bubbly, so I think it’s working? Only problem is that most of the sourdough recipes I’m finding also require commercial yeast… And the few sourdough-only recipes I can find don’t seem terribly compatible with a breadmachine. I guess I’ll give one of them a try next week…
I think I have some baking powder in the cupboard, so maybe I’ll look up some recipes for soda bread or something similar.
I happened to have some dry yeast in my cupboard, and it will last a long time with my infrequent use. I only ever use it for the rare homemade pizza or homemade alcohol.
Just today I began “baking” brown sugar wine flavored with lemon juice. This is a classic Finnish springtime recipe called sima, which is usually only very mildly alcoholic. When people make sugar wine with a seriouds alcoholic content and no flavoring, just for the purpose of getting cheply drunk, it’s called kilju, another classic of Finnish folk cuisine.
I have loved nearly all of the yeast raised products I’ve tried, but I do have a soft spot for cinnamon buns, and am planning on making some myself. What recipe do you use Giliell? I haven’t decided what sweet treat comes after the buns, possibly my version of yeast cake, possibly some Bienenstich we’ll see.
The local shop was out of flour last week and I craved for cinnamon rolls.
Result: spelt whole grain fluor cinnamon rolls are a bit chewy but totally yummy.
lochabar
Somehow, my sourdough and I are not good friends this time, but I think it may be because I only had normal flour. Now I have a big full box of 00 flour (and no normal flour left). Sourdough needs a lot of time.
Jazzlet
Some 25 years ago I wanted to make cheese cake so I asked my gran for her recipe and she said “you need flour” and I asked her “how much” and she said “enough”. I’m afraid i turned prematurely into my own gran as I don#t use a recipe for cinnamon rolls. The things I find that make for good cinnamon rolls:
-more salt than you think you need
-sticky dough is hard to form but good to bake
-butter. When I make a big serving I use half a pound of butter on one kg of flour, more or less evenly divided between the dough itself and melted butter for the filling.
Thanks, Giliell. You’ve inspired me to make cinnamon buns from scratch. They’re usually something I make for special occasions, but right now I’m trying to make every day a bit more special.
In CZ, yeast, and not toilet paper, was sold-out in most supermarkets. Eventually they started to ration it and allowed to purchase only a limited amount per shopping basket.
My parents are baking a lot these days since I only go shopping once a week/fortnight.
Giliell@5> Thanks. Yeah, from what I can tell, it looks like no-yeast/sourdough starter only recipes need a lot more resting and rising time, many looking to take an entire day or two betwixt the start and finished product. At least most of it looks like it’s just passive waiting, so I should be able to handle that, as long as I time it so I don’t have to get up in the middle of the night or whatever.
I think I’m going to go with what I found here:
https://heartscontentfarmhouse.com/bread-machine-sourdough/
It doesn’t look too difficult, and one person in the comments mentions making a couple changes to keep it entirely within the bread machine container and still having good results, so I’ll probably give that a try…